The classic way to download and install programs in Windows has always been by downloading the latest version from its website, or from a page to download programs , and installing it from its installer. This is probably the easiest way to do it. However, it is light years ahead of other operating systems, such as Linux, which have a package manager that automates and simplifies all this task. After many years, Microsoft has finally decided to add a package manager similar to Linux APT to Windows 10. This is WinGet.
WinGet, also called Windows Package Manager , is a newly created package manager for Windows that, over time, will become part of this default operating system. Thanks to this program we will be able to install software directly through a series of official repositories through the Internet without having to search for the programs manually. Of course, the tool is open source, and the community repositories are, too.
This will allow us, for example, to create our own scripts with essential programs, which will save us a lot of time when configuring any operating system or virtual machine.
Commands and programs for WinGet
Although WinGet is at a very early stage of development at the moment, this new package manager looks promising. Some of the commands that already work for this tool are:
- install: allows us to install the selected program.
- show: shows information about the selected package.
- source: allows us to manage the software repositories.
- search: allows you to search and view information about the apps.
- hash: help system to install programs.
- validate: check that the manifest of a program is correct.
- –Help: displays help.
- –Info: Displays additional information for troubleshooting.
- –Version: shows the version of the WinGet client that we use.
As we can see, although it is still in a very early phase of development , it already has the basic functionality that we can give to this program. However, there are still many features to include in this package manager. Without going any further, there is no function to uninstall a program, see a list with all the installed ones, nor to update. Although Microsoft has already confirmed that these functions will be available very soon.
As for the software that we can find, Microsoft is doing a good job to include the programs most downloaded by users. For example, we can find software from Adobe, 7Zip, GIMP, ShareX, Spotify, qBittorrent and many more.
We can consult the complete list with the programs included in the WinGet repositories from the following link .
Try WinGet
Although, as we have said, WinGet is still in a very early phase of its development, Microsoft allows any user with Windows 10 version 1709, or higher, to try the first preliminary version of the program.
For this, what we must do is download this version from its repository and install it on the computer. WinGet is distributed as a UWP application from the Microsoft Store, so we will have to install the appxbundle file that we will download from GitHub.
WinGet is used from CMD or from PowerShell. We must execute the command, followed by the parameter that we want to execute. For example, to install 7Zip we can do it by executing:
winget install 7zip
In seconds we will have the latest version of the program installed on the computer.
We don’t have to memorize all the programs. Thanks to the “search” command we will be able to search for all the packages that correspond to a certain word.
Not the only package manager for Windows
Although the truth is that WinGet looks very promising, it is not the first similar project for Windows. Without going any further, one of the most popular that we can find is Chocolatey. This tool has been on the market for a long time and does the same, but better. At least for now.
We will have to give Microsoft time to continue improving its open source tool and see how, little by little, Windows continues to become an operating system that is as similar to Linux as possible. And that, by the way, is not a bad thing.